The present specification relates to identifying matching objects, for example, objects having associated attributes, each of which has a corresponding value.
Object matching refers to matching a received object to one of multiple objects in a database of objects based on one or more attribute values shared by the received object and the matching object in the database. In particular, two objects are defined as matching objects when the two objects are representative of the same product or item.
In managing and searching a database of products, an important matching problem is that of linking individual product offers (i.e., objects that are a description of a product in the form of attributes and uploaded by different merchants) to entries in product databases. Offers that get matched can then be shown in the product pages as part of product search results, which groups all merchants which sell the same product, thereby facilitating price comparison.
This problem is very challenging because, among other reasons, (a) different merchants tend to describe same products differently, as there is no agreed upon standard for describing products, (b) merchants often specify their products incompletely, thereby making it difficult to determine exactly one catalog entry, and (c) product accessories tend to also have very similar descriptions as the parent products, often with only minor differences, thereby leading to ambiguous or incorrect matches.